Toyota and Toy Yoda

Setting: With two toddlers strapped in the back seat and the mother in front, they are driving in the car to the store, listening to the radio with a Toyota dealership commercial.  After the commercial ends.

 

Evan: I think he was talking about Toyota.

 

Me: You’re right!

 

Evan: I want a Toyota.

 

Me: Well, you’re in luck; we’re driving in one.

 

Evan: I want a Toyota from McDonald’s.

 

Me: Oh!  A toy (pause) Yoda.  The commercial was about a To-yo-TA, not a toy Yo-DA.  We drive a To-yo-TA (I pat the dash board.)  We have toy Yo-DAs at home.

 

Evan: I think I want to go to McDonald’s and get a toy Yoda.

 

Me: I’m sorry, baby.  They don’t have toy Yodas there anymore.  I know we promised you (Stupid Daddy for promising something you just can’t deliver), but they had Darth Vader instead and Princess Leia.

 

Evan: I think I want to get a toy Yoda at McDonald’s.  That would be good.  I’m hungry, and my tummy is saying, “feed me, feed me.”

 

Me: (roll of eyes) It’s too early to go to McDonald’s; we’re going to have a hot dog for lunch later.

 

See I told you my family was Star Wars crazy.  I guess I should dig out Yoda from the toys.

 

 

 

 

It’s like someone else’s room . . .

So my in-laws came in town yesterday, and I was putting the finishing touches on the guest room.  You know like actually dusting and opening the windows so it wasn’t so stuffy.  When all of a sudden Evan said something most interesting.

Evan: This looks like someone else’s house.  It’s like someone else’s room.  It’s like Grandma’s room.  Then we went to the hospital, and then we went upstairs.  We got a baby.

Me: You remember going with Grandma to the hospital?

Evan: Yes, we went to the hospital, and we went upstairs.  We changed the baby.

Could he actually remember when Sean was born sixteen months ago, when Evan was only 22 months?  Amazingly, it seemed he did.  When my mom came the day of Sean’s birth to visit for three weeks to help me out, she went and picked up Evan and brought him to the second floor to meet his new little brother.  Wow!

On a side note I remember Evan’s look when we buckled Sean into the carseat next to Evan.  “What the hell?  It’s coming with us?”

Bring me the head of Yoda

My family are Star Wars fans.  Not fanatics, but we have seen the movies over and over.  We even saw all the new ones several times in the theater even though they sucked.  Honest to God, they sucked bad.

My husband’s love of Star Wars came at a young age.  Since he was born in ’71, he was the perfect age for the Star Wars trilogy.  To cinch the deal, as though it actually needed to be closed after watching the movie on the big screen as many times as he could beg his parents, that Christmas some family friends bought him the WHOLE set of Star Wars action figures.  We’re talking every single action figure they had made, plus the Millennium Falcon.  I can only imagine how the must of been.  He talks of it with longing, as he remembers how he kept pulling one toy after another out of a giant box.  Of course, he doesn’t have them anymore because he sold them in his early 20s for beer money.  Smart.

I was born the night after my parents went and saw The Empire Strikes Back.  Actually my mom thought she had indigestion from the pizza the night before.  Instead she was in labor.  What pop out?  A skinny, bald, big-head, big-ear baby, who bobbled her head if you didn’t support it.  (Yeah, my parents were pretty clueless when it came to babies.  I’ll write about it one day.)  Basically my dad held me up and proclaimed me Yoda.  And it stuck.  He encouraged the movies when ever they were on tv.  The three of us grew up wanting to be Jedis.

Now that my husband and I have boys of our own, we are just chomping on the bit to indoctrinate them into the culture.  We have Yoda toys everywhere.  My parents gave my husband tons of Happy Meal toys of Star Wars.  We own tons of Pez dispensers.  We own both trilogies and the Star Wars: Clone Wars series.  Let’s not mention all the video games.  We were ready to have boys.

But we’re a little too ready.  I threw one of the Clone War series in the DVD because it was a cartoon.  How bad could this be?  (Anyone with toddlers is laughing at me.)  Evan loved it!  He loved it!  And he wanted to be a Jedi.  After I explained that the red swords were for bad guys and the green and blue for good guys, Evan went in search for a sword to match the colors.  Realizing for the first time that to sword fight meant you needed someone to beat and hurt, Evan then searched for his new bad guy, Sean.  Great!  We weren’t even half way through the shows when Evan is using a foam stick to get his little brother.  Ah!  No more!  No more DVD.  Your brother is a Jedi.  Your both good guys!  Remember rule #1, no sword fighting an unarmed person!  Stupid DVD!

Of course, my husband wasn’t home for this colossal mistake, so now I have to keep convincing him that Star Wars is not a good idea right now.  He is also pushing the real movies.  They’re PG!!!!  My husband is completely clueless when it comes to ratings.  I actually caught him showing the Batman cartoons to Evan, and those are pretty violent and dark (Or the time several years ago when he wanted to put a movie on for his best friends kids {4&8}, he was about to put on Jurassic Park before his beast friend stopped him.)

Yesterday I learned the Evan is probably too young for the Yoda toys.  As I buy almost every Yoda toy I can find, we have several and several are too complicated for Evan.  Evan has a few rubber Yodas, but they are not nearly as fun as Mommy’s.  Those spin and do tricks.  And Daddy is just as pleased to let Evan play with him.  It’s like saying “Daddy, I love football; let’s watch.”  “Daddy, can I please play with Yoda?  I love him.”  Months of playing with Yoda have yielded no problems, except one of the Yoda’s heads comes off.  I watch this one carefully because it seems the perfect Sean-choking size or Evan-nose size.  Then yesterday Evan handed me one of Snap Lock beads and asked me to get Yoda’s head out of it.  Crap.  But I guess it could be worse.  I peered into the hole to see Yoda’s head at the bottom of the bead, realizing this was a fantastic opportunity to explain to Evan how we need to be careful with our toys.

As soon as the mini-lecture was over, Evan was running around bopping things with the Yoda pillow.  Yup, that worked.  Ah, running a household of boys.  I really need some more estrogen in this house.